GOD STORIES Inspiring Encounters with the Divine
Edited by
JENNIFER SKIFF
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Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Skiff Reading Group Guide copyright © 2009 by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com Three Rivers Presss and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2008. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Skiff, Jennifer, 1961– God stories : inspiring encounters with the divine / Jennifer Skiff.—1st ed. 1. Miracles—Anecdotes. 2. Presence of God—Anecdotes. I. Title. BL487.S55 2008 204'.32—dc22 2007051750 ISBN 978-0-307-38269-6 Printed in the United States of America Design by Lauren Dong 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Paperback Edition
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Contents
Introduction
1
“A BEAUTIFUL SIGN” Looking Beyond 7 “IT’S ALL GOOD NEWS” 33
Listening to the Voice
“IS THERE ANY WAY YOU CAN HELP ME?” Having a Prayer Answered 65 “I WAS KICKING AND FIGHTING AND CLAWING” Welcoming the Guardian 103 “YOUR FAITH HAS CURED YOU” Receiving the Healing 125 “SOMETHING TOLD ME NOT TO TAKE THAT FLIGHT” Accepting the Warning 141 “WHAT WAS THAT?” 163
Feeling the Light
“I SAW A HUGE, POWERFUL HAND” Seeing Is Believing 187 “I KNEW WHEN SHE PASSED AWAY” Confirming the Afterlife 209
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“I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU” Getting That Feeling 233 “I’M NOT READY TO GO” Coming Back from the Other Side Acknowledg ments Reading Group Guide
269 273
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Introduction
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hy am I here? Is there more? Does God exist? These questions nag at us incessantly throughout our lives. But the answers are elusive, always just out of reach. Today we are fact-driven people: we need evidence before we form opinions and often dismiss events that can’t be logically explained. Yet we desperately want the security that comes with having a certain future. The search for that security has divided people into two camps: those who look for solace in organized religion and its promise of an afterlife, and those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious—they believe their souls are going somewhere, but they’re not sure exactly where. Regardless of what camp you’re in, we all want the same thing. We want confirmation that what we believe is true. We want proof of modern-day encounters with the Divine. I’ve been offered proof of God’s existence at regular intervals in my life through experiences so profound they’ve given goose bumps to atheists. These epiphanies have blanketed me with an inner peace, washing away my fears and giving me hope for the future. The intense joy I feel at these times eventually dissipates and I drift into a safe complacency. As time passes and life events take their toll, I start to question again until yet another unexpected collision with the Divine awakens me like a plunge into cold water and replenishes my faith. I know I’m not alone. Because the proof we’re given is not tangible, it’s often held
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tightly for a short time and then released. But our appetite remains insatiable. Like ants to a grain of sugar, we crave more. And that’s what has brought us here. As you turn the pages in this book, a chill may overwhelm you, your eyes may fill with tears, and the hair on your arms may suddenly stand as the answers to the questions you’ve always wanted to know become apparent. My reason for writing a book of this nature is not the obvious one. I’m certainly not an expert on the subject of God or religion. The idea first came to me when a minister asked if I had any “God Stories.” I asked her what she meant, and she explained that a God Story was a miracle-like experience that proves God exists. No one had ever asked me that question before. I did have stories. I hadn’t dared to tell many people about them, but I definitely had had what I believed to be encounters with the Divine. The concept piqued my interest as a journalist, and I wondered if many other people had stories too. To find out, I began to poll my friends, and what happened next surprised me most. I realized that a Divine intelligence that many call God is connecting with millions of people every day. One of my own encounters happened when I was thirty-two years old. It was a time of overwhelming sadness and disappointment. Professionally I was thriving—working as a correspondent for CNN, the biggest news network in the world. But personally I was very unhappy and felt like a failure. I was married for the second time, and for the second time I was planning to divorce. It was at this time that I began experiencing a debilitating pain in my right leg. After months of consultations with doctors who couldn’t determine what was wrong, I was sent to the chief of orthopedics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where it was confirmed that I had a tumor in my bone marrow. I needed to be operated on immediately.
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When I awoke from surgery, my doctor told me he had been able to save my leg temporarily, but I did in fact have bone cancer. And although it sounds terrible, I felt a sense of relief knowing I would no longer have to continue on with my life. And then something strange happened. Within forty-eight hours of my diagnosis, I began receiving cards, flowers, stuffed animals, and gifts of delicious things to eat. I had no idea how so many people had learned I was in the hospital. A person I hadn’t seen since I was a young girl wrote to tell me how I had influenced her life. Notes arrived from different parts of the country from people I didn’t know telling me they were praying for me. My friends and family cried and overwhelmed me with their affection. I was engulfed by a warm blanket of love. Nearly a week after the surgery, I was in my hospital bed envisioning my funeral when my doctor rushed into my room, breathless. He looked at me and smiled a big, wide smile. “I never get to say this,” he said, shaking his head and throwing his hands into the air. “Benign!” “Benign? What do you mean, ‘benign’? I thought it was malignant.” “It was,” he said. “The slide we looked at told us it was malignant. The lab results have just come back, and they say it’s benign. We’re going with benign!” The entire experience was all the proof I needed. I had been given signs before, but this was obvious. There was a God for me, one who made it clear it was important I continue on with my life—to work toward positive change in the world and to see and understand all I had been blessed with. Some people spend their whole lives questioning, while others are offered what they believe is proof. The confirmation for actress Jane Seymour came while she was filming a movie in Spain. She was given antibiotics for a bronchitis infection and
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immediately went into anaphylactic shock. “The next thing I remember, I was panicking and then I wasn’t panicking,” she said. “I was very calm. I was looking down at my body. Then I realized that I was out of my body and that I was going to die. So I asked whoever was up there—God, a Higher Power, whatever one wants to call it—I just said, ‘Whoever you are, I will never deny your existence. I will never let you down. I’m not going to waste one minute of my life if I have it back.’ ” In this book you’ll find out what happened next that changed Jane Seymour’s life forever. God Stories is a collection of such Aha! experiences. The stories are told by people from every walk of life—all celebrating that breakthrough moment when they received dramatic confirmation of the existence of a Divine Power. The result is pure inspiration: a compilation of extraordinary experiences that have renewed spirits and affirmed faiths. In California, Senator Dick Mountjoy’s spiritual awakening came at a time when he was embroiled in a political battle and in the depths of professional despair. A stranger approached him, put her hand on his shoulder, and asked if she could pray for him. His life changed in that instant. He describes how a warm feeling quickly spread throughout his body and a sense of calm fell over him. From that moment on, he felt a continuous sense of comfort and all his worries slipped away. In Maine, a young mother describes the chilling moment she realized that she and her children were going to die. She was driving down a country road when two drag racers came over a hill directly in front of her, taking both lanes. She didn’t have time to avoid a head-on collision. In God Stories, she tells how God intervened and saved her life. Shirley Blake describes a brutal rape as her epiphany. She was fifty-nine years old. In what can only be described as the most frightening moment in her life, she says she heard God’s
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voice reassure and comfort her. In this book you find out why, today, she says the experience was enlightening. I realized the significance of this project when I started collecting stories. My goal was to be interviewed by the media in hopes that the publicity would direct people to my website, where they could submit their stories. At the beginning of this process, I was interviewed by a newspaper editor in his office. When he wrapped up his questions, I asked him if he had a story. He did, and as he told it, he cried. I was completely taken aback and didn’t know what to do. And then, as I listened, I realized how privileged I was that he was sharing his story with me. Little did I know that this profound experience would be repeated every day from then on. As the sun rose each morning, I found myself hopping out of bed and rushing to my computer to read the incoming stories. Some brought me to tears. Others simply surprised me, like the one my husband unexpectedly shared about the scar on his forehead. When I began the search for stories, I said I was looking for one thing: the moment a person received personal proof that God or a Divine Power exists. People of many religions, cultures, and races responded. The stories they provided are true to them. There will be skepticism in response to this book, and I think it makes for a healthy dialogue. I started the collection process by setting up a website, www.GodStories.com, where people could submit their stories. I then worked with the media to direct people there. At GodStories.com they were asked to provide personal details, declare that the stories were their own, and agree to their names’ being used. Those who were not willing to verify their credibility by using their own names were not considered for publication. If I thought the story was right for the book, I contacted the person and often began a series of interviews via e-mail and over
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the phone. I was not always able to conduct in-person interviews, because the stories came in from all over the world. After the interviews, some stories were no longer considered, for various reasons. Surprisingly, as the stories came in, similar themes emerged. These themes became chapters, and the book you are holding took shape. I suspect your life will be changed by reading this book just as mine was after hearing these stories. I have been left with a sense of amazement and optimism as well as an abiding belief in something I once questioned. And it doesn’t stop on the last page, because once you give yourself permission to believe, you’ll find God Stories happening in your life every day.
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“A B E A U T I F U L S I G N ” L o o k i n g B e yo n d
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“God, please give me the words to say!” M A R I A N B R O W N , Court Reporter
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s an adult, I drifted away from the Roman Catholic faith in which I was raised. I still believed in God and prayed on my own but was often skeptical that he was listening. His message on one special day wiped away all doubt. My husband, Steve, and I lived with our two sons in San Diego County, California. Our home was the first to burn in what is known as the Firestorm of 2003—the second-largest wildfire in U.S. history. It burned over 700,000 acres, destroying wildlife and 3,710 homes, and taking 24 lives in October of that year. It would be several days after evacuating before we could return to the ruins of our home. A group of twenty of our closest friends spent all morning going through the ashes with shovels to see if there was anything salvageable before our lot was cleared for rebuilding. Their efforts were unsuccessful. There was absolutely nothing left; in fact, the fire was so hot that there were holes in the ground where trees had burned to their roots. I decided to bring our two sons to the site later that morning. I wasn’t sure how they would react, but I knew they needed to see it with their own eyes in order to begin the healing process. My older son, Evan, was thirteen years old at the time and was very stoic. It was my younger son, ten-year-old Erik, who broke my heart as he walked through the ashes quietly wiping away tears. I didn’t know what to say or do when my children looked
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imploringly to me, yet I knew that my reaction would be key to how they handled this disaster. I began to pray as I stood there: “God, please help me. Give me the words. What do I say to my children, who have lost the only home they’ve ever known, lost everything they have in the world?” At that very moment, Erik called out, “Hey, you guys missed something. There’s a book over here.” Our friends said, “No way. We’ve been sifting through the ashes for four and a half hours and there’s nothing left, certainly nothing made of paper.” But Erik insisted until we finally all trudged over to where he was pointing at the remains of a book. He bent over and picked up the book, and as he did, the layers of pages fell away, disintegrating in his hand. Everyone shook their heads and began walking away. Someone said, “Oh, we’re so sorry, honey. There’s nothing left but ashes.” “No. Wait. Look,” Erik said, extending his arm. There in the palm of his hand was the most fragile piece of ash, the size of a half-dollar. On it was a picture of a family holding hands and three words: count your blessings.
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“I would love to see this little boy’s face” P A U L H A M M O N D , Network Administrator
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y wife and I had been sending shoe boxes of presents for Operation Christmas Child for a few years. One year we had packed a really nice box for a young boy. As we finished packing, I looked at my wife and said, “I would love to see this little boy’s face when he opens this box.” The following year we were preparing to do another box and happened to pick up a publication for Operation Christmas Child. My wife was reading it when she called me over to look at something. There, on the bottom of page three, was a picture of a little boy hugging a teddy bear he had just received in his Christmas box. Lo and behold, on closer examination of the box in front of him, we saw all the unique items (and wrapping) we’d chosen the previous year, including the very recognizable bear. It was our box!
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“Mom, look!” B A R B A R A E I K O S T, Retired Hospice Volunteers Director
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have always trusted my faith but had never experienced a “spiritual event” until the morning of January 5, 1998. My sixty-one-year-old husband, Bill, had gone to the hospital on New Year’s Eve when his multiple myeloma symptoms worsened. For the next four days he seemed to stabilize, but we realized the treatment that had worked for seven years was no longer effective. Our son who lived nearby had been very attentive, and on Sunday the fourth, our other son in Atlanta hopped a plane for Toledo because he sensed his presence was important. Bill was delighted to have his boys with him. He was lucid, mindful of the Rose Bowl results, and seemed peaceful as friends stopped in to wish him well. My sons and I went home in the late evening. We were awakened suddenly at 4 a.m. with a call from the hospital saying that Bill was experiencing difficulty and was asking for us. We were at his bedside in fifteen minutes. He was in great distress, trying to get oxygen and struggling to live. Our physician was present, helping us to understand what was happening. My sons and I surrounded Bill with passionate expressions of our love and gratitude for all he had meant to us. Just as he breathed his last breath, my son literally shouted, “Mom, look!” Right outside my husband’s large hospital window on that gray January day was a vivid rainbow! There was neither rain nor
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sun, but this ribbon of color in the sky told us in ways that defy explanation that our beloved husband and father was being escorted from this world to a better place. I have never questioned this experience, and I have never expected to fully understand it. I simply accept it as a remarkable expression of the gracious mystery.
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“God truly saved me” S T E P H E N W O O D , Nursery Own er
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t was October 28, 1991, and I had decided to go paragliding from a three-hundred-foot ridge. It was a particularly windy day, and when I reached the ridge, I felt it was too dangerous to soar from the top. So I walked two-thirds of the way down in hopes of doing a small glide from there. I had put down my bag and was adjusting one of my risers (straps similar to a seat belt that help with balance) when I heard a rustling in the bushes. I had been warned that there were quite a few poisonous snakes on the property, and immediately I thought it might be a snake. So I grabbed my bag, threw it over my shoulder, did a safety check of both risers, and jumped. But the moment I jumped, I realized I hadn’t adjusted the second riser—I was totally out of sync. I spun into the ridge, corrected myself, and then got caught in the updraft. Now I was six hundred feet above where I had started. Severe turbulence then caused the paraglider to deflate and collapse. Like a sack of potatoes, I fell more than three hundred feet to the ground. My back was broken, but I was alive. When I came out of intensive care, doctors told me the accident had caused so much damage that my spine would have to be fused together with plates and bolts. I had a burst vertebra, and two others were fractured. The operation would take place in three days. The morning before the operation, I awoke to see a vision of a doctor in a white coat standing by the side of my bed. He was
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in a happy mood and told me not to have the operation but to lie in bed and let my spine heal naturally. He went on to say that he’d had a patient who had suffered a similar injury to mine in a parachute accident and had let his spine heal naturally, lying still for eight weeks, and he was fine. I thanked him and put my hand out to shake his, but he literally disappeared— evaporated before me. But he had been as real as any person! A nurse came into my room five minutes later and I told her what had happened. She told me to do exactly what he had advised and to tell no one of my experience. Later that morning, I was being wheeled out in my bed to have an MRI body scan and recognized the doctor in a life-size portrait on the wall in the corridor. On my return, I told the nurse and she said she knew. The man, she said, was Sir George Bedbrook, a greatly admired and respected surgeon whom the ward was named after. His specialty was spinal healing using natural, nonsurgical methods. The nurse then told me he had passed away three weeks before. That was a hard day. I had to tell my surgeon, wife, and parents that I was going to lie in bed and let my spine heal naturally. The surgeon explained that the injury was much too severe for this option. My wife and parents were left with the job of convincing me to go ahead with the operation. I didn’t go ahead with it, and today, fifteen years later, I am in perfect health and run a very physically demanding business. I have never forgotten my visit, which was truly an act of divine intervention direct from God. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world!
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“You can do it!” M A R I E D E S J A R D I N S , Retired Waitress
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hen I was twenty-eight years old, in 1978, my small intestine ruptured. My six-year-old daughter found me on the floor of our home, unconscious. She called for help and I was rushed to the hospital, but it was too late. The doctor didn’t think I was going to make it. My body was shutting down and I was drifting in and out of consciousness. The doctor called family members and the priest to give me the last rites. That same night I was alone in my hospital room and suffering from excruciating pain when a nurse appeared beside me. She was dressed in uniform and seemed to be very old, with many wrinkles in her face. I looked at her hands. They were stretched out toward me. Something inside me made me feel that if I touched those hands, my pain would be less severe. So I reached out for them, but she disappeared. I remember telling other nurses about the woman, but they all said there was no one of that description who worked there. I told the doctor, and he said I was hallucinating. I then told my priest, and he said it was the Blessed Mother coming for me. But, he added, she didn’t take me because I had something else to do before going. Despite the odds, I did survive. But when I recounted the story of the Blessed Mother to my husband, he actually thought I was going crazy. And so I stopped telling the story and didn’t mention it again.
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Twenty years later I saw a notice on a church bulletin board for a pilgrimage to a village in Bosnia-Herzegovina called Medjugorje. I had never heard of the place before and didn’t know of its importance. As I read about it, I found out that it was a small village where the Blessed Virgin Mary had been appearing and giving messages to the world. I knew I needed to go. And so I went, traveling all the way from my home in northern Maine to Bosnia-Herzegovina. When I got there, I knelt to pray before the statue of Mary. Her hands were outstretched to me, and in that instant I was reminded of the woman who had appeared to me twenty years before as I was dying in the hospital. They were the same hands! As I looked at the fingers on the hands, I noticed they were all black and chipped, and I found myself saying, “Blessed Mother, if I only lived close to you, I would fix and paint your hands.” I don’t know why I said it. I had never held a paintbrush! But as I was saying it, I heard an inner voice in my heart telling me that I would do it. Shortly after I returned home, a man I knew only as an acquaintance knocked on the door of my house. He had never been there before. He asked me only one question. He wanted to know where he could get a pair of hands fixed on a statue he had of Our Lady of Grace. I couldn’t believe it. Why had he come to me? I found myself telling him that I could do it even though I had no idea how! But I kept hearing an inner voice in my heart saying, “You can do it. You can do it.” That night I prayed for help to fix the hands. The next day I went to Wal-Mart and bought plaster of paris and Play-Doh. I worked with the different compounds all week, sculpting and cooking them in my oven until I got it right. Eventually I taught myself how to fix a statue using joint cement and fine sandpaper, finishing up with paint. I have now fixed and renovated more than a thousand statues of Our Lady. I
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have never charged anyone for it. This is my mission. This is my purpose. I think this is my ministry. I kept silent about this story for twenty years because I thought people would think I was crazy. But I do feel I was kept alive that night when I was twenty-eight years old to do this work.
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“Elvis was my way of reconnecting with her” B I L L B U T L E R , Radio Broadcaster
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y mother passed away when I was six years old. She was a single mother and had been raising me by herself. She was all I had. My mom was a huge Elvis fan. Listening to Elvis records with her is one of my most cherished memories. After she passed, Elvis was my way of reconnecting with her. When I was twenty-six years old, my wife and I had the chance to go to Nashville. I made her promise that we would end the week in Memphis. I wanted to see Graceland. The tour was great, and we had a fantastic time. There is a gift shop at each of the museum exits at Graceland, tempting you to buy something as you leave. I picked up a DVD at the first shop and was determined to stop spending money and just breeze through the other shops on the way out. After leaving the Sincerely Elvis Museum, I was walking swiftly out of the gift shop when a shiny little object caught my eye. There were hundreds of name pendants on display, and the one that caught my eye was out of alphabetical order. It was heart shaped with a silhouette of Elvis and my mother’s name, Sheila. At that moment I felt a shiver throughout my body. I believe that my heart was reaching out to God, asking for confirmation that my mother was in a better place, and he felt compelled to answer. At that moment I knew there was a God and that I was loved. I have never doubted since.
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“Believe” B I L L F O L E Y , Retired Teacher
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planned on visiting my brother on December 29, 2002, in an ongoing effort to mend our relationship. I thought we could watch the New England Patriots’ last game of the year together. It turned out to be a very cold day, though, and I didn’t feel like leaving my warm home. My conscience pricked me to go— reminding me that I would enjoy the game more if I watched it with someone else. But I didn’t go. At the time, I had serious doubts that God existed. Friends had suggested inviting God into everyday situations to try to make contact with him. So, instead of watching the game with my brother, I invited God to watch the game with me. It was a low-scoring game. The Miami Dolphins led by only eight points but had dominated. With just eight minutes to play, the Patriots’ quarterback attempted a pass that was intercepted. It looked as if the game was over. The television cameras focused on the fans streaming out of the stadium. I turned to God and reminded him that I still struggled with a belief in his existence. And although I wasn’t really concerned with the outcome of the game, I humbly assured him that if he were to engineer a turnaround at this point, it would strengthen my rather weak faith. The next drive stalled on the ten-yard line and the opponents settled for a field goal, extending their lead to eleven
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points, which would require the Patriots to score twice in five minutes in order to win. The Patriots then received the opponent’s kickoff, but a couple of plays later, the quarterback threw the ball into an opponent’s arms. Sensing disaster, a Patriots player blatantly interfered to avoid the interception. I waited for the officials to penalize him, but, strangely, they ruled that the opponents had done the interfering and gave the ball to the Patriots. It was then that I asked God if he had distorted the officials’ perception at the time of the infraction. He didn’t respond, but in the next few minutes it seemed a switch had been thrown. The New England team suddenly was alive. Then came, in addition to the previous blatantly erroneous call, two other questionable rulings by officials, two disastrous kicks by the Dolphins, two circus catches by Patriot receivers, and a favorable coin toss. The kickoff was so unusual that one of the players told a reporter, “It was as if the Lord reached down and touched the ball to say, ‘I’m with you guys!’ ” During that mind-boggling few minutes, I found myself asking God, “How do you do this?” I had a sense that there was a different connection to my mind, something I had never experienced before. But then the old familiar thoughts that I have always identified as my own began: “Be serious—you’ve seen these things happen plenty of times. It was all just a coincidence.” The Patriots won the game by a field goal in overtime. I couldn’t believe it! I had asked for it to happen and it did. I ended up on my knees in front of the TV. “I can’t believe you did that. You’re really real,” I thought. The TV was still on, but the audio was off. I saw the quarterback being interviewed and then the start of an ad for Guinness beer. The storm continued in my mind. “You’ve seen this sort of thing a hundred times. It’s
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a coincidence. You’re deluding yourself!” Doubt crept back in. The ending of the Guinness ad faded to black and then one word filled the screen: believe. I laughed and cried and I’ve never been the same since.
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About the Author
jennifer skiff’s award- winning career as an international television journalist includes more than a decade as an investigative correspondent for CNN. Her specialty is the environment, and among other industry honors she has received the prestigious Environmental Media Award. Passionate about animals and their welfare, she works with charities throughout the world to bring relief to abused and abandoned animals. A cancer scare in her early thirties convinced Jennifer that a Divine presence was active in her life. Her journalistic instincts took over, and she began a quest to find out if others had similar experiences. The result is her first book, God Stories, a collection of inspiring first-person accounts of miracle-like encounters with God. With her husband and dogs, Jennifer spends her life in perpetual summer between Maine and Australia. To find out more and to share your own God Story, visit www.GodStories.com.
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